Last month, Maryland became the latest state to protect a worker's right to ask colleagues one of the most taboo questions in American society: How much money do you make?

The state joined at least a dozen others that explicitly shield compensation-curious workers from employer retaliation. (Texas isn't one of them.)

The move to boost pay transparency came about four months after President Barack Obama laid out new rules that would require companies with more than 100 employees to report to the government salary data based on race, gender and ethnicity, drawing ire from somein the business community.

Advocates hope the simultaneous efforts pushing employers to scrutinize their own wage breakdowns - and guarding the employees who choose to discuss them - will help reduce pay disparities between white men, women and employees of color in similar jobs.

But a Point Taken-Marist Poll, published in May, shows an obstacle in moving past today's culture of secrecy around pay. Americans just aren't comfortable revealing what they earn - or, apparently, their companies' pay ranges.

More than seven in 10 Americans do not think private companies should be required to publish employee salaries, either publicly or internally, the poll found. Two-thirds said they'd rather not disclose their personal income.

The answers differed across race and gender lines.

More men than women would prefer firms keep pay numbers private (79 percent versus 67 percent.) And 63 percent of white respondents said releasing such numbers would create friction within companies, compared to 51 percent of non-white respondents. (The survey did not explore beyond these broad characteristics.)

Fewer than one-third of respondents would be OK with sharing their own salaries. Broken down, that's 33 percent of men, 28 percent of women, 28 percent of white respondents and 34 percent of non-white respondents.

Why people remain mum is a matter of speculation. Maybe they find it inappropriate to ask what has long been considered a highly personal question. Maybe they're afraid to learn they've been making less than their friends at work and beyond.

The decision from businesses to withhold such information is obvious: Worker pay is a cost, and they want to keep costs down.

Just 538 adults nationwide answered the Point Taken-Marist questions, so this glimpse into the American psyche is rather tiny.

Another survey this year, led by Jennifer Deal, a senior research scientist at the Center for Creative Leadership, also found Americans to be tight-lipped about their money but increasingly less so.

Most millennials her team heard from, for example, didn't feel comfortable sharing their salaries with co-workers. They were still more likely to pass around numbers than Generation X-ers or baby boomers: 38 percent of the younger cohort said they'd bring it up with colleagues, compared to 19 percent of older staffers.

Still, evidence that employees are discussing pay at all should be enough for employers to lift the curtains, Deal wrote in a Wall Street Journal column: "Recently some organizations have been perceived as discouraging staff from sharing information about pay, which actually caused even more staff to share pay information, and many to come to the conclusion that the leaders of the organization were trying to hide unfair compensation practices."